In 1887 Dr. Herman Hollerith introduced and developed the idea of a punched card to help process the data from the U.S. 1880 census which had not been processed by 1887 by the use of hand tabulation methods. Dr. Hollerith is viewed as the father of current keypunch and computer input methods.
In 1965 Mohawk Data Services introduced a method of transferring alphanumeric symbols from a typewriter keyboard directly to magnetic tape.
In 1969 IBM developed a new and smaller type of keypunch card for its System 3 computer.
Since the 1960's other data processing input devices have been developed, and information is now more likely to be stored on a magnetic disc than on a magnetic tape due to more rapid access from a disc of symbolic and other codes.
Though a typewriter type keyboard is still the most common means to put information into an electronic data processing system; there are a variety of other processes available which include; optical scanning devices; magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) readers; optical character recognition (OCR) readers; "Mark Sensitive Devices" that can read hand writing or printed and typed paper documents; readers of laser encoded photographic plates; laser readers of colored photographs; "mice"; "joy sticks"; point of service input as by cash registers; and "Touch Tone" input that uses a portable pad with 12 keys to input into a computer via any telephone.
Some input devices have "smart terminals" that have their own integrated microprocessors process input within the input device before relaying it on for further processing within a computer.
A review of the literature on computer peripherals and computer input devices; and a review of the U.S. Patent Abstracts for Class 364-Electrical Computers and Data Processing Systems; Subclasses: 188-With Operator Control Interface Control Display Module; 189 Keyboard; and 190-Positional (Joystick); fails to reveal a computer input mechanism similar to this invention. This inventor has filed for U.S. Patents on computer input mechanisms that are used as teaching and testing apparatus, and has been granted U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,521,199, and 4,522,599; with several similar patent applications still pending. With only slight modification, and with a different format of programming, the inventions covered by the above patents and related patent applications can be adapted to the invention covered in this patent application.